Balancing Wrathful Skies

[Turin]

Boron said:
No Chazar is right imo . Normally there is plenty of money available . 100 fire gems give you between 1500-4500 money . By early lategame you will have 100 fever fetishes .

So just keep storming with e.g. 10 armies of 30 flaggellants or pikeneers and 20 x-bows and 1 or 2 inquisitors almost every turn . Such an army costs about 600-700 gold but can overcome small obstacles and maybe even thugs .
Firegems and thus money is in much higher quantities available then airgems in a normal game .

As Chazar says Wrathful skies is still quite an investment .

I don´t know about your math, but you could just alchemize those 40 firegems you need for 600 gold(27 with alchemy stone) into 10/7 air gems and fuel your wrathful skies with them. You have to factor the upkeep of that army in as well(with strat move 1 they will take a long time to reach the enemy forts) . And the wrather doesn´t even have to cloud trapeze.

[Huzurdaddi]

Turin,

I am glad to see that someone else is playing the game game I am playing.

I don't have any idea why people would like to keep wrathful the way it is. The only possible reason I can see is so that they can beatdown on people who do not know about it's power and that is sad.

[Soapyfrog]

Or they have not witnessed first hand how early it can be obtained and how devastatingly effective it is. Saying you should just keep throwing troops at the wrathful squad is insanity... there is no effective counter at the research levels that wrathful can be obtained and effectively implemented.

Just for the record, I agree, wrathful is way too powerful.

[Boron]

Huzurdaddi said:
I don't have any idea why people would like to keep wrathful the way it is. The only possible reason I can see is so that they can beatdown on people who do not know about it's power and that is sad.

Cause it is boring to nerf everything into oblivion just for the sake of "perfect" balance .

Dominions is not Starcraft or Battle for Middleearth where balancing is easy because of only about 30 different units .

Maybe the requirements should be upped a bit but that's all . It should not be nerfed into oblivion like the VQ .

[Huzurdaddi]

Cause it is boring to nerf everything into oblivion just for the sake of "perfect" balance .

Who said anything about "oblivion"? I would love to see wrathful nerfed but not into oblivion I want it still to be a choice but I don't want it to dictate how the game is played either.

What is boring is to have one dominant strategy ( wrathful ) and have all other stratgies be a concequence of that strategy (ie: only deploy lighting immune troops ).

It should not be nerfed into oblivion like the VQ .

The VQ was hardly nerfed into oblivion. It was nerfed such that it was not the most optimal pretender. The GK filled that role and hence he should be next on the chopping block.

Maybe the requirements should be upped a bit but that's all .

I agree. Something like A7 works dandy.

[jeffr]

If some unit/spell (in this case Wrathful Skies) is used by everyone, then it must be more powerful in relation to other units/spells. In this case, it's value for the cost(i.e. bang for the buck) should be reduced. You could decrease the bang, up the bucks (casting cost, casting level, research level, etc.) or both.

Units/Spells that are not used by anyone or seldom used should have their bang for the buck increased. Increase the bang (unit/spell power) and/or decrease the cost.

I believe Zen's mod attempts to do this.

Maybe in Dom3 there would be some way of capturing MP statistics on what spells/units were used the most/least. Over time, this would give a pretty good indication of what needed to be scaled up and what needed to be scaled down.

[PvK]

jeffr said:
If some unit/spell (in this case Wrathful Skies) is used by everyone, then it must be more powerful in relation to other units/spells.

Only if you assume everyone makes good choices.
Besides, not everyone uses Wrathful Skies.
Nevertheless, I tend to agree that I'd like to see Wrathful Skies be more difficult to cast, for my own tastes. I think it's a neat spell, but would rather it require a more powerful (and/or more expensively-prepared) mage.

Maybe in Dom3 there would be some way of capturing MP statistics on what spells/units were used the most/least. Over time, this would give a pretty good indication of what needed to be scaled up and what needed to be scaled down.

Well, if it were a program which auto-generated an optional Nerf Du Jour mod to shut up forum whiners, maybe.

PvK

[Yvelina]

> > > It should not be nerfed into oblivion like the VQ .

> > The VQ was hardly nerfed into oblivion. It was nerfed such that it was not the most optimal pretender.

Actually, I have not seen a VQ in play since the nerf, so I'd say 'oblivion' is indeed accurate. Personally I think that the VQ downgrade went WAY too far. I was never too afraid of undead pretenders, because there are a number of spells that take care of them real well. I was a newbie, and I cannot say I could have handled the VQ in her prime, but I have since killed a number of GKs in middle/late games, and frankly I do not see how the VQ pretender deserves the ridiculously high cost and the expensive paths.

By the way, I have not seen Black Forest Ulm much lately, either. The VQ was a way to make them half-way viable.

Right now, the only nations that can take a VQ without dooming themselves are Jotunheim, Caelum and Abysia (guess why!) and each of them can do a lot better

> > The GK filled that role and hence he should be next on the chopping block.

> Yeah but that's the problem.

Hear, hear!

> I agree that the VQ was too good but now after the VQ is nerfed if the GK gets also nerfed then if this is continued we end up by having all pretenders having equal stats .

Yes, and in any case, the good players, defined as those left standing after the smoke clears, are the first to move to the new Uberalla. I am in a game with Zen's mod, and I look at my boyfriend's turns in another. Funny how popular the Virtue has become, all of a sudden... or how well the Asinja leads Vanheim.

[Boron]

Huzurdaddi said:
Who said anything about "oblivion"? I would love to see wrathful nerfed but not into oblivion I want it still to be a choice but I don't want it to dictate how the game is played either.

What is boring is to have one dominant strategy ( wrathful ) and have all other stratgies be a concequence of that strategy (ie: only deploy lighting immune troops ).

The VQ was hardly nerfed into oblivion. It was nerfed such that it was not the most optimal pretender. The GK filled that role and hence he should be next on the chopping block.

Yeah but that's the problem . I agree that the VQ was too good but now after the VQ is nerfed if the GK gets also nerfed then if this is continued we end up by having all pretenders having equal stats .

Especially that the nerfed VQ is now taken away from Ermor is a thing i still don't understand as well .


The problem is really to know when to stop .

If the Gk would get a small bit nerfed like 25 new path costs and Wrathful skies needs A5 or so to be cast that could be a good idea but i am still not sure if it is really necessary at all .

[Huzurdaddi]

Boron said:
Yeah but that's the problem . I agree that the VQ was too good but now after the VQ is nerfed if the GK gets also nerfed then if this is continued we end up by having all pretenders having equal stats .

Hardly. Perfect balance would be where every pretender has equal utility when employed optimally which in a rich game like dom2 != equal stats.

Chazar said:
Despite being Caelum, I found it pretty difficult to use Wrathful Skies

The classic forumla seems to be: 1 tank designed to last a good 10 turns (3 or 4 of those closing of the other side) + 1 wrathful caster with SoS scripted to retreat (for most nations this is a harbringer with Air nations they can use national mages ). This forumla, seen time and again, works wonders.

jeffr said:
Maybe in Dom3 there would be some way of capturing MP statistics on what spells/units were used the most/least. Over time, this would give a pretty good indication of what needed to be scaled up and what needed to be scaled down.

I agree, hard stats help a lot in figuring out what is going right/wrong.